


the (former) host

by letmebefranwithyou



Category: The Host - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:29:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmebefranwithyou/pseuds/letmebefranwithyou
Summary: In which Jeb was right; I'm still a parasite in the back of someone's brain, except now it's a brain I don't love.
Relationships: Melanie Stryder & Wanderer
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	the (former) host

**Author's Note:**

> hellooooo! This is Fran and this is my first time posting here so let's see how this goes! This is just a small fic I'd had in a drawer somewhere, thought I could go ahead and post it to see how ao3 works from this side of the equation. I love The Host and Stephanie Meyer didn't explore some of my favorite (possible) character interactions and tropes, so here goes some of that! This is unbeta'ed and unpolished.

Between the shyness, the physical weakness, and the terrible way I couldn’t help but miss the mother that wasn’t mine, the worst aspect of living in Pet’s body was being away from Melanie. I felt awful; I had finally given Mel the freedom she wanted, she _deserved_ , that was rightfully hers. Melanie hadn’t even been all that present in our last months together, since happiness had mellowed her. She hadn’t been that present. I’d _wanted_ my head for myself. I loved her.

I couldn’t bear it.

Jamie patted my hand, sensing my distress, though by his squint I knew he didn’t know why I was tense. Ian was squished against my other side, his arm behind my shoulders long enough he could almost wrap it around Jamie as well. The car ride was silent, the radio on a low volume. Ian and Jamie loved music, but Melanie was sleeping on the passenger seat and Jared, who was driving, wouldn’t dare do anything that could wake her.

We were on the empty road, driving fast towards the next town. Things were as calm as they could ever be with us. The view was beautiful but known and thus a bit boring; my eyes had veered to Melanie five minutes into the ride and they were still there.

I wondered what she was dreaming about. I used to be able to tell when she was—not sleeping, but something like it, when she was calm and quiet in the back of my head. I used to be able to touch the very edges of her thoughts like wet fingertips on a fragile bubble, just enough to taste if she was dreaming something sad, something happy, something good.

I hadn’t done it much. I’d never really dipped my fingers deeper, enough to tell what exactly she’d been thinking. Now I couldn’t do it anymore.

I wondered what she was dreaming about, my head empty of anything but my own spiraling thoughts. She would be dreaming normal human dreams now she was back to herself, now I wasn’t there to push her into the confines of her own brain. She would be dreaming about normal life, or about ridiculous, unreal things, or rehashing memories, or thinking about Jared, or Jamie, or me, I thought, and the thought stuck to me and wouldn’t be pushed away: maybe she was dreaming with me.

 _I find myself incapable of being your death_ , I remembered her whispering that day. It had been a complicated thing to say, and joined as we were I had had the front seats to all the complex, intricate details of it. Melanie hadn’t wanted to kill me—even though that was not what I was doing—but she also hadn’t wanted me to kill us. Not only what we had had, but what we had been. Together, the body with its mind and the parasite leeching of its brain, we were more than we had been alone; greater than the sum of our parts.

Melanie and Wanderer. Mel couldn’t help them like I could, but I couldn’t do so much without her, either, especially in the young, fragile body they had chosen for me.

I couldn’t run.

“Wanda?” Jamie whispered, his voice almost swallowed by the wind, having hit his breaking point with my obvious distress.

I squeezed his hand and shook my head, and said nothing. What would I say? That Melanie were she was, so close but too far for me to reach, was unbearable? That I wished I hadn’t left our body, that I wished I were still keeping his sister from him? It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t true. I wanted to give Melanie to herself. That had been the point of all that mess. I just wanted—

I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know how to name what I wanted.

“We’re arriving at the hotel soon, then you can rest,” Ian said softly, reaching out to squeeze my hand.

“Okay,” I said just as softly. “I’m not tired, though, you know. We haven’t done anything but sit.”

“Sitting is tiring!” Jamie argued.

“Mentally tiring,” Ian added.

“I can’t wait until we go meet Cal and the others,” Jamie continued, spurred into conversation. “He seemed so cool, but he didn’t talk to anyone but you! And you said he’s from Planet of Fire! It’s the one planet you don’t really talk about.”

“I never lived there,” I reminded him.

“I know, but—“

“Settle down, kids,” Jared said, narrowing his eyes at them in the review mirror. He glanced at Mel and I did too, but she hadn’t even stirred.

Her arms were crossed on her lap, one hand hanging out of the seat. Close, but so far. My own hands tingled, both of them claimed by the boy and the man beside me, but still feeling oddly empty. Oddly—something. They didn’t want _these_ hands, and the hands they wanted were right there, still too far. A part of me—small, hopeful, heartbroken—thought that if I could touch Melanie, just a bit, right this second, if I could just _hold her hand_ , maybe all of this would be fixed.

“We’ll arrive in twenty minutes,” Jared said after a moment of silence.

When I looked up, his eyes were directed at me. I still felt a pang when looking at them, the echo of a love plus a love plus resentment of the love, mine and hers; ours. A kaleidoscope of feelings. There were so many layers. I was so tired of them.

We drove on.

***

We arrived in the hotel early in the morning, before the sun had risen. Melanie woke up as soon as the car stopped, her eyes snapping open and immediately searching mine. We made quick work of getting our bags and choosing a room. The atmosphere was tense and stressed, and all of us were quiet. We were used to going to hotels after the sun dipped beneath the horizon and leaving them before the sun rose, but the schedule this time wouldn’t allow for it.

We all relaxed a bit once we entered the room itself and locked the door, closed the curtains, turned off the light.

“I’ll take first watch,” Mel said as she stretched one arm to the ceiling, long and tan and muscled. My feelings were twofold: that body had been mine, and I ached; Melanie was tall and beautiful and competent, so much unlike me in this child they’d put me into. And—Melanie was tall and competent and beautiful.

“You can sleep some more,” Jared said. “O’Shea can take first watch.”

“She slept the whole ride,” Ian said dryly. “Speaking of, Wanda, don’t you want to lie down for a bit? You didn’t get any rest at all during the ride.”

“You didn’t sleep either,” I argued, but my words were punctuated with a yawn.

Jamie laughed, and so did Mel, easy and affectionate. Mel threw herself back on the double bed—which she’d share with Jared and Jamie—and patted the space by her side.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the window and you can take a nap. Jared, you and Jamie wanted to watch Bake Off, right?”

“Keep the volume down,” Ian asked.

Jared rolled his eyes. He and Jamie settled on the thick carpet between the beds and turned on the television, while Ian stayed where he was and eyed me as I made my way to Mel’s side. My insides were syrup-y with relief, too-sweet. Mel sat up properly, fluffing the pillows behind her as she settled for the long hours she’d be there, and then fluffed the pillows beside her for me as well.

I sat on the bed, then laid down. The pillow was soft. I really was tired. It’d been hard to settle with her so far away, but now she was right beside me. She dropped a hand to the golden curls of my hair, like everyone did but not like everyone did, because people thought they were entitled to touch me, and Mel really was.

 _I’m here_.

I didn’t have Mel’s words in my mind anymore, but I could hear them just the same.

***

I slept like a rock, waking up several hours later. By then I had moved until I was pressed entirely against Mel’s body, an arm thrown around her waist. Her hand had migrated from my head to my shoulder, making a little cave for my head in the space between her and the back of the bed. My nose was against her shirt. It was a new one, but I could still feel the caves lingering in her skin: the musty smell of it. Of home.

I blinked blearily and sat up. Mel hummed a greeting, eyes glancing away from the window minutely to look at me.

“Hey, Sleeping beauty,” came a soft voice, and when I turned around I saw Ian sitting on the other bed, the one we would share. He had a book in his hands he seemed to be leisurely reading. He couldn’t help but look at me: at the way I hadn’t moved away from Mel when I sat up, the way she’d simply allowed it without a word, arm secured more firmly around my shoulders.

I didn’t know what to make of his looks, but he didn’t seem upset, exactly.

“Hi,” I said. “How long did I sleep?”

“A few hours,” Ian told me. “Enough for Jamie to drop off, at least. You hungry?”

“Jamie was talking about ordering Chinese,” Jared said without looking away from his own book. He was still sitting on the floor, Jamie sleeping with his head on Jared’s legs. “It’s almost lunch time, anyway, and we’ll have to leave soon after.”

If Jamie wanted Chinese, then that would be what they’d eat. I rolled my eyes. As if people didn’t already know we would do anything Jamie wanted.

“You wanted burgers, though, right?” Mel piped up, glancing at me again. “You were talking about it with Jamie a few days ago.”

I blinked up at her, surprised. Melanie was looking steadily down at me; I couldn’t decipher her look either, and something twisted in my chest. Once I would have had not only her words but all the layers of meaning behind them.

“I guess,” I said. “You know I don’t care much, though. If Jamie wants Chinese—“

“If you want burgers, we can get burgers!” Jamie interrupted me with a shake of his head, a beam on his face. He looked at me upside down, without moving away from Jared.

“I thought you were asleep,” I said, my own lips twitching up in a smile.

“Typical that talk of food would wake him up,” Mel murmured into my hair, using her arm to bring me closer.

I laughed lightly, amused, and the vines around my heart eased. Mel was so warm against my side; I couldn’t even care about Jared’s calculated look, Ian’s searching one. I was utterly at peace.

***

We gathered our things—not hard, since not a single one of us had unpacked—and made our way to the room where the other humans were staying. They should have arrived already, their trip not so long as ours. I felt calmer than most walking these halls, but not even I could help shivering as we went. This wasn’t an ordinary raid, after all, but a meeting between more humans than I had seen together at once since the start of my life in this planet.

That wasn’t entirely true. Our group was bigger than Nate’s. Still, that was what it felt like.

I went first, along with Ian, who kept a tight grip on my wrist. My skin tingled where he touched. I couldn’t tell if it was in a good way. Things between us had been awkward; I knew he loved me, but couldn’t quite tell what I felt. I loved him, but I didn’t know in what way. Melanie hadn’t been too forthcoming about it when I’d had her intuition at my disposal, and was even less forthcoming now.

I’d thought a change of bodies would mean my heart would stop being wrenched in so many directions.

“Don’t worry,” Ian whispered to me.

“I’m not worried,” I told him.

This had been a common exchange ever since I’d woken up again.

Ian knocked on the door of Nate’s room, keeping me one step behind him. Nate himself was the one who quickly opened it, checked it was them, and ushered them in. His people were spread around the room, six to our five; as well as Nate, Racheal, Kim, Rob, Evan, and Cal were there, missing Blake and Tom, at least where the select group of people we’d first met a few weeks ago was concerned.

Ian stepped forward, towards Rob. I detached my hand from his and made my way to Cal.

“Hello,” he said promptly before I could. “I trust your trip went well?”

“Yes,” I told him with a smile. “As it usually is. There were virtually no other cars on the road. And yours?”

“Perfectly fine as well. I slept the whole way, either way. Where are your companions?”

I turned around to look at the door and as soon as I did it, a knock sounded out. Nate opened the door again and Mel, Jared, and Jamie walked in. Jared lingered to greet Nate properly; dimly I heard him get straight to business. Mel, who was holding Jamie’s arm firmly, made her way to me.

Mel nodded to Cal.

“Melanie,” Cal said politely, glancing at me. He, like the others, knew I had occupied Mel’s body before; he didn’t seem to know what to do with the information. “Wanda says the trip went well?”

“Yeah,” Mel said, as polite and awkward. The same way she was grasping at Jamie, she reached out for my hand.

Cal caught sight of it and seemed to grow sad.

“It’s nothing against you and it doesn’t mean we don’t feel safe or something like that,” I explained to him, giving him a reassuring smile. “We are all just, ah, touchy-feely.”

Jamie snorted.

“I see,” Cal said, but didn’t seem that convinced.

“It’s this body,” I told him, lowering my head for a moment.

“No, it’s not,” Mel argued, letting go of my hand to wind an arm around my shoulders. She brought me to her side. She looked down at me with furrows between her eyebrows. She seemed to want to tell me something with her eyes alone, but I’d learned to read her very mind, not the lines around her face, and had no idea what she was trying to communicate.

“You _are_ very beautiful,” Cal mused, head tilted to the side. “And small. I can see why people would be keen on keeping you safe by their side. It must have been jarring, what with Melanie being so tall and… fierce.” Mel seemed flattered. “I remember how awful it was, when I went to my second life in the Planet of Fire. I can’t imagine what it’s like in _this_ planet.”

Jamie immediately perked up. Racheal, who’d been watching us all with obvious curiosity, let out a laugh.

“You had more than one life in the Planet of Fire?” the boy asked, excited. “Wanda never tells us much about it, I have so many questions—“

“Jamie,” Mel and I scolded at the same time.

Jamie laughed, and Cal as well, even though he wouldn’t quite get what was fun about Melanie and I acting like one person. Even if only for a fraction of a second.

“Having fun?” Ian asked, taking my free hand. I hadn’t seen him finishing his conversation with Rob, but I wasn’t surprised he’d cut it short and made his way to me. Ian was my rock, after all. I knew he’d always be by my side.

“Yes,” Cal said honestly, sending Ian a wide smile. “I see another friend has attached himself to you, Wanda. Might Jared perhaps pass by in a moment and hug you around the waist?”

Mel laughed sharply. “No. Jared is too busy being productive over there while we talk about literally nothing.”

“You could at least try to join the productive conversation,” Jared said dryly without turning away from Nate. “It’s why everybody is here after all.”

We grew quieter at Jared’s serious tone. Ian sighed, tugging at my hand, and I took another step to his side. We walked with no hurry towards Jared, the whole group converging in the middle of the room until a circle was formed. I knew we were there to talk about many important things, but my mind wandered. I wanted to look out the window, I wanted to look at Cal, I wanted to look at Mel. I knew the meeting would drag on for hours. I didn’t want to be bored already, but I was. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be—somewhere.

But that was fine. Mel’s arm around my shoulder was warm; alive. I couldn't ask the world anything more.


End file.
